Smoothies are a great refreshing snack idea for the summer months, but you may want to stop adding bananas to your blended fruit beverage if berries are included, since you could be stopping key nutrients from entering your body.
According to expert advice from a food professor, mixing bananas and berries together could be preventing your body from reaping the full nutritional benefits of berries – which contain a natural compound known as flavanols.
Why bananas shouldn’t be mixed with berries
Gunter Kuhnle, a Professor of Nutrition and Food Science with expertise in dietary assessment and plant bioactive, shared a LinkedIn post explaining why bananas should not be mixed with berries, if you want to keep the benefit of flavanols.
Flavanols (sometimes called flavan-3-ols or catechins) are a type of chemical compound found in various fruits, vegetables, and plants.
Medical News Today explains flavanols are a natural compound commonly found in foods and drinks such as berries, grapes, cocoa, and tea.
Flavanols have many health benefits, such as helping reduce the risk of heart disease and cognitive decline.
It is suggested that people try to get between 400 and 600 mg of flavanols per day, and this can be easy to achieve by making some small changes to the diet, but Gunter Kuhnle explains why you need to be careful what foods you mix.
Berries are a great source of flavanols, but combining berries with bananas (a staple ingredient of most delicious smoothies) might not be a good idea since the enzymes in the banana break down the flavanols. This results in no flavanols ending up in the stomach – or the body.
In the journal titled Food & Function, a Chief Science Officer named Catherine Kwik-Uribe and colleagues investigated the effect of different foods on flavanol uptake and showed that it is better to eat bananas and berries separately for maximum flavanol intake.
Study shows how bananas destroys flavanols available in fruits
The study, based on how food preparation affects the flavanols available in foods, investigated how smoothies containing bananas saw them decline rapidly after the preparation.
Results showed that, due to the presence of the enzyme polyphenol oxidase (PPO) in bananas, blending flavanol-rich fruits and vegetables with high-PPO food like bananas releases the PPO and destroys the flavanols available.
To ensure your diet is enriched with the nutrients, try having a break from your strawberry and banana smoothie and instead, separate the berries into a different beverage this summer.
Dietary flavonoids are found in the plants humans eat, including many fruits and vegetables. Flavanols are a subgroup of the larger flavonoid group, found in a variety of plant-based drinks and foods, including berries.
All berries contain flavonoids, but some varieties are more potent than others. Blackberries are particularly powerful and include all six types. Blueberries, cherries, and raspberries also contain all flavonoids. Strawberries have moderate amounts of anthocyanidins, as shown on WebMD.
Gunter Kuhnle is a Professor of Nutrition and Food Science, with expertise in dietary assessment and plant bioactive, he is also a Director in a Chemical Analysis Facility and an expert in nutritional biomarkers and public health policy.
